


A Twist of Fate

by Nicholas_Lucien



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Healing, Hurt, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24365278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicholas_Lucien/pseuds/Nicholas_Lucien
Summary: Upon trying to heal from the burning stake impaled into him by Nicholas, LaCroix finds out he is more twisted inside than even he realized.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The story takes place during and after 'Hunters' and references this episode along with 'Dark Knight', 'Killer Instinct,' and 'Night in Question.'
> 
> I do not own these characters and is not intended to infringe upon any copyright owners. No profit is being made from this work.

_“He’s out of control, Janette. He’s running on instinct.”_

“Is that such a bad thing?” Janette paused. “Is it such a bad thing, Nicolas,” she slowly enunciated, “to be running on the instinct of self-preservation?” She waited for a response, but there was only silence and then the click of the connection being broken. With a huff at being dismissed, Janette returned the handset to the cradle. How could Nicolas, she wondered, forget what activities they would all do in order to survive.


	2. Chapter 2

Natalie filled her cup with warm coffee in the break room. She closed her eyes, waiting for the effects of the caffeine to occur. A few moments later, Natalie felt she was energized enough to continue working. She had spent the day with Nick at his place, going through more of Schanke’s old cases, looking for anyone who might want to kill him. She was supposed to have been off tonight but got the call to come in. Natalie rotated her neck to try and relax the muscles. Working one emergency shift with little sleep wouldn’t kill her, she reminded herself as she walked down the corridor.

“Grace,” Natalie began as she entered the tiled room, then stopped. The other woman wasn’t there. She shrugged, then went over to collect the freshly sterilized tools and tubes she would need for the next autopsy, laying everything out upon the small, wheeled stainless steel table. Behind her, Natalie heard the door open. “Grace, glad you’re back,” she said, beginning to turn around, “have you seen the-”

“Do not scream.”

Natalie leapt back from the stranger, banging into the side of the autopsy table. “Oh my God.”

“Do not say that, either.”

Natalie saw the stranger wince when she had spoken, just like Nick sometimes did. She scampered around, putting the metal table between her and what she thought might be another vampire. Natalie’s gaze darted around the room, checking to make sure no one was coming in; she didn’t want anyone else potentially being hurt. Her gaze returned to the pale stranger. His face had the stretched looked of skin healing from a burn, and his voice was hoarse. “Who are you?”

“What I am is more important to know.”

She looked into the pale, ice-blue eyes of the stranger. At least they were not yellow. “Vampire. I would still like to know who you are, and also why you’re here.” Natalie glanced at the phone – too far away to reach it and call Nick. She saw he had noticed what she had been looking at, but made no move towards her or the phone.

“I am LaCroix.”

Natalie gripped the metal table. She knew that name - Nick had mentioned it a few times. He had also mentioned that LaCroix had died - in a fire. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

LaCroix moved his lips slightly into a tiny sneer. “I have been dead for almost two millennia.” He stiffly moved closer to the mortal.

Natalie watched LaCroix’s pained approach. “What do you want here? Nick? Revenge?”

LaCroix stopped at the metal table, putting a hand down upon it. “Not revenge. Not yet,” he clarified. “I came for you.”

“To kill me?”

“No, to-”

Natalie heard the agonized grunt while the vampire leaned onto the table for support.

“It pains me to ask a mortal for assistance.”

“Seems like that isn’t the pain you just felt.”

LaCroix straightened up, ignoring his body’s protests and the prickling stings from his chest where Nicholas had impaled him. “You understand what I am and can help.”

Natalie huffed in disbelief. “You want me to help you? Aside from the fact that I don’t know exactly what help you need, why would I?”

“I could still kill you.” LaCroix paused. “I require human blood to heal,” he softly reminded her.

She listened to his labored breathing. “I don’t think you could.”

“I will heal from this. I have before. I am old, and very powerful.”

“And then what? Take your revenge on Nick? I would tell him you’re here.”

“That would make no difference.” A stab of pain, as intense as when Nicholas had first driven the burning stake into his heart, enveloped him and he almost fell.

Natalie watched as LaCroix bent over, clinging to the table for support. Against her better judgment, her training to help rose up. She wasn’t afraid of him, just like she hadn’t been afraid of Nick when he had laid upon that same table. “If I help you, there’s something I want from you.”

LaCroix used his arm to lever himself back up. “What do you want, good doctor?”

“Don’t hurt Nick.”

LaCroix was surprised. He had assumed she would want what mortals usually wanted from him – immortality. “Are you sure? He tried to kill me.”

“But he didn’t, and I know what you did to him.”

“You want me to forgive Nicholas?”

“I want you to not hurt him. Call it what you want – spare him, forgive him, give him a second chance - just don’t hurt him.”

LaCroix grinned, then nodded. He needed her to finish healing. “I only ever have Nicholas’ best interest at heart.”

Natalie glared at LaCroix. “That is my condition for helping you. Swear it.”

He glared at the doctor. “I give my word, I will not lay a hand on Nicholas to injure him.”

“Or a weapon, or anyone acting on your behalf.”

LaCroix nodded, indicating he accepted the terms; he did not want her expanding her conditions too much. Oaths to mortals were only valid for the lifetime of the mortal; he did not want her to have time to consider that possibility and modify her demands. He indicated the overhead lights. “Since you have agreed to help me, you can start by reducing those. It is much too bright.”

Natalie, forcing herself to move, began to walk around the table. “I need light to work. You can close your eyes.” She stopped close, but not too close, to him. “What is wrong?”

LaCroix pivoted slightly to face her. “I was burned, but I am healing from that.” Using his free hand, he pointed to his heart. “Nicholas impaled me with a wooden stake.” Fire he could understand, but the stake, a burning stake, that was crueler than he thought Nicholas was capable of being. That was a direct attack and a direct betrayal. His son had sworn to protect him, defend him, guard him against attack. He had not even tried to do that when he had the chance.

Natalie looked at the area LaCroix had pointed to and watched him sway slightly. “Take off your coat and shirt, then,” she said, patting the metal table, “lay down.”

“Here?”

“Why not?”

LaCroix looked around; he had thought they would go to a small, secluded private room. “What if someone enters?”

“If anyone comes in, just play dead. After all, you’ve had nearly two millennia of practice.”

Natalie turned around and went over to get her tools; soon, she heard him get up onto the table. Wheeling her little table, she placed it next to LaCroix. Reaching up, she adjusted the hanging lamp to direct the light onto the vampire’s chest. Like his face, the pale skin of his muscular arms and broad chest showed signs of healing from a severe burn. Donning a pair of latex gloves, Natalie gently skimmed over the inflamed tissue on the left side of his chest, the entry point of the wooden stake, she surmised. The area was red and partially open, as if the tissue was trying to heal but something inside was keeping it from completing the task.

LaCroix watched as the woman examined him; her clinical stare not something he was used to receiving. Then she walked away. “Breaking your promise already?”

“No,” Natalie said as she opened a drawer. “Just getting a magnifier.” She put the headpiece on and lowered the lenses over her eyes once she returned to the autopsy table. Looking at the wound, she could now see some small wooden slivers. She guessed there were probably more deeper within the injury, leftover from when he pulled out the stake. Natalie gently probed the area, and LaCroix twitched from her touch. “Try to stay still and relax,” she recommended while she reached over for the metal Huber Mall probe. The area was tough, and not that yielding; she would need to cut the wound open more to reach in and extract out the foreign objects. Natalie put the probe back with the rest of her tools. This would be painful, but there was nothing she could give him. She needed to tell him what to expect, at the very least.

Natalie raised her magnifier and looked at LaCroix. His eyes were closed, and she saw rapid eye movement under the lids. She put her hand on his shoulder and shook him slightly, but there was no response. “I guess you were more exhausted than I thought,” she said out loud. Still no response. Natalie went back to his chest and reached over for a scalpel with one hand while pulling the magnifier down with the other. If he was unconscious, she needed to make use of the opportunity and work quickly. She sliced around the damaged tissue, opening the wound more and spread the edges further away. She picked out every splinter she found, finding them with more frequency as she went deeper, closer to his heart. There was one particularly large splinter she could just see in the area where the left ventricle should be. Natalie leaned back, cocking her head to one side. _Where the left ventricle should be._ She increased the intensity of the overhead light source, grabbed her probe, and went back into the chest cavity.


	3. Chapter 3

LaCroix woke, the spikes of pain from the wooden stake in his chest make him reach over to try and pull it out. But he couldn’t get to it, his hand grasping only air. He clenched his eyes shut, wondering when Nicholas would remove it. His son had promised to pull out the soldier’s stake. LaCroix raised his head, but he was weak and let it drop back down. He was surprised when his head collided with something hard instead of the cushion of the couch he had been expecting. He opened his eyes and jerked into a sitting position. A white sheet slid down his bare chest, and there was a twinge of pain in his right upper abdomen. He looked down and saw a tube coming out of him, red fluid flowing through it, which he followed to a full packet with a blood component label stuck to it. Looking around the dim room, he recognized the modern location while the old memory he had experienced receded back. Then he heard a mortal heartbeat behind him.

“You’re finally awake.”

LaCroix glanced at Natalie before grabbing the packet, pulling out the tube, and sinking his fangs through the plastic to get to the blood within.

Natalie adverted her eyes as she went to retrieve the biohazard trash container. “You went through three of those.” Once he tossed the empty bag, she returned the container to its usual location in the morgue.

LaCroix felt better, the intense weakness he had been experiencing was gone, and the stinging sensation in his chest was absent as well. He looked down, his hand going to his left chest to feel the wound, along with the stitches the doctor had put in.

Natalie brought over the metal collection tray. She angled it to show him the pile of various sized splinters she had pulled out. “These were preventing the tissue from healing and closing properly. Now that they are out, you should make a full recovery.”

“Of course,” LaCroix said with a small grin. “As I mentioned, I have gone through this once before. I fully recovered then, and I will fully recover now. A benefit of being what I am.”

Natalie nodded in agreement. “Yes, definitely a benefit of what you are.”

“A powerful vampire.”

“No, not from being a vampire.”

LaCroix frowned. “I survived what would have killed a mortal. A stake through the heart-”

“Not the heart,” Natalie interjected. “The stake grazed your heart, it never went through it. Mortals like you,” she lectured, “have survived what would have been lethal to the rest of us.”

LaCroix felt his fangs descend. “I am not a mortal.”

“No,” Natalie agreed, “you’re not. But what let you survive wasn’t something you got from being a vampire, but was something you were born with, as a mortal.” She ignored the low rumblings that were issuing from her patient. “I pulled most of these,” she said, shaking the collection tray, “out of the side of the muscle of your right atrium and right ventricle. Located on the left side of your body.”

“Your point being?” LaCroix demanded.

“That side is where the larger left atrium and left ventricle should have been. The majority of the heart is located on the left side, exactly where that stake entered your chest. But your heart wasn’t there. Dextrocardia. Your heart is flipped, caused by a random incorrect twist during embryonic development.” Natalie placed the tray back on the small table. “I checked a few other organs to confirm, and you have situs inversus totalis - all your visceral organs are reversed from normal.” She shrugged. “It happens in about 0.01% of the population, and with no medical complications, it goes unnoticed in most individuals. Had anyone known this about you, they would know to aim for-” Natalie quickly backed up when LaCroix suddenly appeared before her. His eyes, she noticed, were no longer blue.

“Listen to me,” LaCroix intoned while focusing on her heartbeat. “I was never here.”

Natalie shook her head. “I can’t be hypnotized.”

“Not by Nicholas; but then, he probably did not really want to.”

“You want to get out of your oath,” Natalie accused as she fought against him.

“I never forget my oaths,” LaCroix slowly spoke, concentrating while he moved closer to her. This time she did not retreat from him. “But, I never agreed that you would remember it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Situs inversus totalis is a rare congenital condition that does affect a very small percentage of the population. Unless another medical complication prompts closer examination, individuals do not know they have this condition. 
> 
> The reference to someone surviving after an injury that would have killed a typical person is true. An individual had once been executed by the execution squad firing a bullet into the left portion of the chest. The individual woke in the morgue, having survived because the heart was not there and was not injured.
> 
> There are a few causes for this inversion: genetics (most notably in primary ciliary dyskinesia), and in mirror-image twins. Just because of another story I am writing, I favor the twin scenario as the reason LaCroix has this condition.


	4. Chapter 4

LaCroix let the body drop to the ground, the fresh mortal blood surging into him. He felt much improved since visiting Natalie a few nights ago, but not strong enough to face Nicholas. Yet. He grabbed the body and deposited it into the lake. He would visit his son when he was fully recovered, offer the second chance he promised he would. He never ignored his vows. LaCroix closed his eyes, feeling the vibrating link with his son. Nicholas was hurting, an instability opening in his mind. He intended to exploit that weakness. To help Nicholas, which, he reminded himself, was still in agreement with his oath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first season, LaCroix is presumptively killed, just to come back in the last episode. However, he does make appearances in Nick's modern life before this. In 'Dying for Fame,' LaCroix appears in the three dreams/hallucinations Nick is having. Later, in 'Feeding the Beast,' LaCroix is interacting with Nick involving his current drinking predicament. I take these times to be LaCroix being close and mentally influencing Nick through their shared link, rather than Nick generating this himself.


End file.
